Anxiety over lingering symptoms.....

Im a 29 year old male. have been athletic my entire life. always felt full of energy and was always doing everything. never turned anything down and sleep was never a priority for me. well a year ago that all changed...........

A little back ground on my symptoms.....

I have spent the past year of my life struggling with anxiety and the fear that I am ill or have a serious condition and it goes one to the next. It all started when I had an exhausting weekend last October and was drinking pretty heavily and not sleeping enough. I woke up for work on monday morning at 4 am and felt terrible, dizzy, sweaty, terrible headaches, blurry vision and brain fog. I called in sick for work and spent the next few days laying in bed trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I couldnt focus on anything, couldnt even type an email and I was weak and had sensitive vision but I had no other symptoms to indicate I had a cold or flu. No sore throat, no runny nose, no cough. I did wake up sweaty and cold every night but never held a fever. I finally went to the doctor and told me I had the flu and put me on antibiotic z pack. I still wasnt convinced I had the flu but I was desperate so I took her word and took the z pack. After 3 days of  z pack I still felt ****** so I called the doc and she switched me to 7 days of amoxicilian. I started to feel a bit better after 7 days of this and made it back to work after missing 7 days but I never really felt 100%. I ended up quitting the job and moved back to ohio from california to work construction for my dad. I still wasnt 100% but was feeling better than that dreaded week. I got back to ohio in november and was working construction outdoors and after 3 days of that work in the cold I was feeling it come on again. This is when I started to worry that something was wrong with me. I went to an urgent care and they put me on another antibiotic bactrim this time and it i took it five days and didnt feel better. I was still feeling weak, dizzy, not sleeping. I couldnt concentrate or focus and it was hell working physical outdoor manual labor in the cold but i toughed it out every day. I went back to the urgent care and they put me on another antibiotic called avelox paired up with allegra. at this point I shouldve just gave up on the doctors and them trying all these antibiotics but i was desperate and believed the doctors knew what they were doing, bad decision. The avelox made me feel awful and made my joints hurt and made me very weak. I called my cousin who is a pharmacist and she told me to just keep taking it that it would knock out the infection. Ive come to find out that avelox is a controversial antibiotic that has a black box label and should be avoided if any side effects occur. So after all the antibiotics I still felt ****** and did come down with a serious cold that led to pink eye, sore throat, my ear clogged up, I could hear for two weeks. I worked through all this outdoors and it was pure misery. I also developed a fear at this time that I had a brain tumor and worried about this all day, every day. I ended up moving back to california and i got another terrible cold and cough that lasted till february but when it cleared up a felt a bit better but still not back to my old self. I also developed a terrible pain in my shoulder and neck and still felt fatigue and weakness every day. I went back to the doctor and she did blood work and an mri of my neck and everything checked out okay so she recommended physical therapy for my neck and that was that. I did the physical therapy and it didnt really help, I still had bad headaches, fatigue, weak muscles and I had my good days and bad. Some days I felt fine others i didnt want to get out of bed. I tried to get it out of my mind and exercised and at as healthy as i could and stopped drinking and started going to bed super early and it did help but it was frustrating cuz i used to be a super energetic person that could do everything, go out for drinks sleep five hours and work the next day and i could play sports with ease and it felt like that life was robbed from me. I still had the fear of a brain tumor so I went back to to the doc and told her about the headaches and fatigue and dizziness so she had an mri of the brain done and that came back clear okay. at that point I started to think it was all anxiety, I finally had the relief of not having a brain tumor, no possible way after the mri so I thought I was fine. That was early summer and since then I have generally felt better but still my neck and shoulder bother me quite a bit. I have had terrible colds that have lasted over two weeks three times since then. The most I ever got sick in the past was once a year maybe, i was a spring chicken. I have days and weeks when I feel great and then I feel the fatigue and muscle soreness and short breath coming on. I had a scare that i was hiv positive this fall when i had a two week cold that would'nt go away but got tested and was cleared on that. Now I see something on tv about an athlete that has ALS disease at 34 years old and i start the fears of that and thinking I have it. this was this week and now i have the fear and notice every time a muscle twitches or i feel weak or i stumble walking up the steps a lil or am short of breath or i notice my swallowing is off, now if i had a problem swallowing i would notice it before reading the side effects of ALS not after and than obsessing over it right? like i dont notice any problem with swallowing but if i think about it my throat seems tight. I just feel like I have a variety of symptoms that will never go away and sometimes I think I have cancer or some unknown disease and that I am slowly dyeing. The only assurance i give myself is that i havent really gotten worse over the past year just back and forth to feeling better and then feeling ****** so if it was a disease it would be progressively getting worse at some point. also my weight hasnt dropped, actually a few pounds heavier than a year ago and through all the sickness i havent really felt nausious or thrown up this entire year.  part of me thinks and knows its just anxiety and fear but on the other side i physically know that i have felt off for a year and something aint right. I see no help with doctors as all they do is push antibiotics, pain killers, steroids, nose sprays, antihistamines etc and i have taken them all with no avail. i do have bad allergies and always have pain pressure around my temples and nose and face but i had a ct scan of sinuses as well and that was clear. i do a nasal rinse with saline and that helps sometimes. the neck and shoulder pain feels like it will never go away and unless it has just surfaced from an old sports injury i have no idea where it is coming from. my ears are constantly popping which drives me nuts and when i go to bed to sleep at night i get these weird sensations that run through my body, almost like a jolt or something, its weird. The only thing good that has come out of all this is i work out now more than ever just to try and prove to myself that i am okay. sometimes its really hard but i push myself through it. try to run 4 miles every morning even with pains in my shoudler and neck killing me and also have knee pain and groin pain that is constant. all my joints ache and pop knees, wrists, elbows neck. I dont drink much or stay out late like i used to. this is all good but i think it ***** that i have to live like this or else i will feel awful. going out and having 4 or 5 drinks leads me to a hangover from hell now and i cant even function the next day. i never had this problem before at all.

I guess i am just posting to get some feedback and comfort from the group on here and some reassurance that ill be okay.  i have a feeling that this is something i will battle the rest of my life which is okay with me i guess as long as i dont have a disease or serious ailment.

-bb

[AmberNikole101]

Look you have some mild to severe anxiety and your most likely a hypochondriac I was once both these things followed by panic disorder and derealization and a bit of depersonalization... YEPP i had a bunch of stuff and was going crazy hahaha,,, But anyways its something your gonna have to deal with you can get on meds and everything but i chose not to and got over everything with in TIME by myself =] You will be just FINE trust your doctors and talk with them some more OKAY? If you ever need to talk inboxx mee ive been through some pretty tough stuff myself and know how it feels.